Presentation software tools, such as MICROSOFT POWERPOINT™, are a widely used for presenting information. They are useful to distill a narrative, such as a sales pitch or company update, into a series of easily digestible slides. However, it may be difficult to display presentations to viewers when they are in remote locations.
One solution is to send the full presentation file to viewers via email or similar file transfer service. This solution may present technical difficulties since: (a) the presenter must ask for the viewers' email addresses or contact information; (b) the presentation files are generally large and may be a slow to upload and/or download or exceed maximum email limits; (c) the viewers are required to have the proper software installed; (d) if intended for a live presentation, both the viewers and presenter must manually advance the slides and attempt to “sync up” with the presenter based on verbal cues; (e) there are no means for the presenter to visually indicate a specific point of interest on a slide during a live presentation; and (g) if the viewer opens the presentation asynchronously, there is no way to provide data back to the sender regarding when it was opened, which slides were viewed, etc.
Another method of sharing a presentation file is called “screen casting”, where the presenter opens the presentation on his computer and then broadcasts the entire contents of his monitor display to the viewers. Several commercial solutions such as WEBEX™ and GOTOMYPC™ use this technique. Example technical difficulties with this technique may include: (a) the presenter must download and install software on their computer; (b) these services often require a time-consuming viewer setup process (e.g., including software downloads or an email-based invitation setup process) to connect the viewer to the presenter; (c) screen casting requires a lot of bandwidth to send a full video of the presenters screen and may often result in slow updates or momentary screen freezes for the viewers, and may not work at all over slower network connections; (d) the presentation software only processes video data and does not have an understanding of the actual slides displayed; and (e) these screen casting methods are limited specifically to live synchronous presentations. They do not provide a way to display the presentation to the viewer asynchronously, without the presenter's direct involvement.